Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society

Thoor Ballylee wishes Galway good luck

This weekend as Galway travel to Croke Park the flag of the Tribesmen flies over Thoor Ballylee.

Yeats’s poor eyesight made hurling an unlikely sport for him, although he did try fencing with Ezra Pound (‘the Irish like contradiction’, said Pound). On the other hand his friendship with Douglas Hyde, founding president of the Gaelic League, gave him an intimate familiarity with the wider aims of the GAA. Yeats’s connections to Dublin and Sligo are well known: his long association with Galway and Thoor Ballylee in particular make this small gesture at the Hiberno-Norman tower, now open 10-1 weekdays and 12-4 weekends for the month of September, all the more fitting.

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society

Welcome to Thoor Ballylee.
This fourteenth-century Hiberno-Norman tower was described by Seamus Heaney as the most important building in Ireland, due to its close association with his fellow Nobel Laureate for literature, W.B.Yeats. The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society are actively seeking funds to ensure the tower and associated cottage are permanently restored and reopened to visitors as a cultural and educational centre.